Province Threatens To Cancel U.S. Weapons Testing British Columbia’s Premier Clark Irked By Collapse Of Salmon Talks

Blaming the United States for the breakdown of salmon talks, British Columbia said Friday it will retaliate by canceling a lease allowing U.S. warships to test weapons in Canadian waters.

Premier Glen Clark said the province is giving 90 days notice of its plan to cancel a license for use of the seabed at Vancouver Island’s Nanoose Bay naval testing facility.

British Columbia officials claim the U.S. Navy has saved more than $1.5 billion in the 32 years it has tested torpedoes at Nanoose Bay because of distinctive geographic features that allow easy recovery of the torpedoes.

British Columbia’s action, taken without approval of Canada’s federal government, follows this week’s collapse of Canada-U.S. talks on how to divide the Pacific salmon catch.

The Canadian delegation angrily halted the talks when informed that the top U.S. negotiator didn’t have a mandate to complete a deal.

Late Friday, Canada’s foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, said he expected the talks would resume next week and urged Clark to reconsider his action.

“We understand Premier Clark’s frustrations,” Axworthy said after a telephone conference call with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. “We hope Mr. Clark would be in a position to reconsider. But that’s for him to do.”

Clark announced the Nanoose lease cancellation at a news conference attended by scores of cheering fishermen.

“The time for talk is over,” he said. “We have taken this step in the public interest because we are disturbed and frustrated by the United States’ uncooperative approach to our efforts.”

Clark also has demanded a tougher response from Canada’s federal government, and has urged Prime Minister Jean Chretien to intervene directly with President Clinton.

Canada says U.S. fishermen have been catching roughly 4 million more salmon each year than they should be, costing the Canadian industry $45 million each year.

Yves Fortier, the chief Canadian negotiator, said negotiations stalled Tuesday when his U.S. counterpart, Mary Beth West, revealed that she lacked the power to compromise over a critical issue involving two salmon stocks - U.S.-bound coho migrating past Vancouver Island and sockeye swimming through U.S. waters south of the island to the Fraser River in Canada.

Fishing interests in Washington and Oregon have long sought to cut the Canadian catch of severely depleted U.S. runs of coho, also known as silver salmon, off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Salmon activists in British Columbia, in turn, have demanded reductions in the U.S. catch of sockeye returning through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and around the San Juan Islands to the Fraser.